BOSTON — So much for stepping on necks.
A night after Jazz Chisholm Jr. said that was what the Yankees were aiming to do down the stretch, they had an opportunity to actually do it by finishing off a sweep of the Red Sox.
Instead, Will Warren dug them an early hole that they could not climb all the way out of, ending an otherwise strong weekend with a 6-4 loss to the Red Sox on Sunday night at Fenway Park.
Warren got ambushed for six runs in the bottom of the first while Garrett Crochet struck out 12 across six innings, allowing the Red Sox (82-68) to salvage the finale and pull back to within 1 ¹/₂ games of the Yankees (83-66) for the top AL wild card.
The Yankees, despite making things interesting late, dropped to four games back of the Blue Jays in the AL East with 13 to play. Their chances of winning the division are getting slimmer by the day, now having to make up five games because the Blue Jays own the tiebreaker — making it even likelier the Yankees could end up seeing the Red Sox again in the wild-card series.
Sunday marked the end of their 12-game gauntlet against four contending teams, which they came out 7-5 — a record anyone would have signed up for going into it, even if it ended on a sour note.
Down 6-0 after the first inning, the Yankees at least made a game out of it.
Amed Rosario, in the lineup because of his ability to hit left-handed pitching, delivered a two-run shot that just slipped over the Green Monster in the fourth inning. He ended the night 6-for-9 in his career off Crochet.
In the fifth, Aaron Judge drilled his 48th home run of the year, a solo shot into the Red Sox bullpen. It marked his fifth home run in his past six games, coming after he had struck out in each of his first two at-bats against Crochet.
And then in the seventh, José Caballero demolished a 423-foot shot onto Lansdowne Street off lefty reliever Steven Matz to pull the Yankees within 6-4.
When Judge led off the eighth with a single against Garrett Whitlock, it felt like the Yankees might actually pull off the comeback. But Whitlock, the former Yankees farmhand, responded by striking out Cody Bellinger, Giancarlo Stanton and pinch-hitter Trent Grisham in succession to squash the threat.
Warren’s night began with Jarren Duran’s fly ball to left field, which Stanton could not track down just in front of the Green Monster as it landed for a triple. Alex Bregman, Trevor Story and Nathaniel Lowe followed with three straight singles to put the Red Sox up 2-0.
Romy Gonzalez came up next and sliced a double to right field for the 3-0 lead.
Warren finally got the first out on the sixth batter of the inning, but it was a productive one for the Red Sox as Masataka Yoshida hit a sacrifice fly. So was the next out, as Rob Refsnyder grounded out but scored another run from third to make it 5-0.
Ex-Yankee Carlos Narváez capped off the barrage by smoking a solo home run to center field for the 6-0 lead, his third this season against his former organization.
It marked the second time this season Warren has allowed six runs or more in the first inning, the other coming on July 2, when he gave up seven runs against the Blue Jays. His other clunker came against the Dodgers on May 31, when he got tagged for seven runs in 1 ¹/₃ innings.
To his credit, Warren settled in after the brutal start and ended up pitching five innings to spare the bullpen in the midst of a stretch of 13 games in 13 days.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
